Acting City Missioner Jacki Richardson said rising rents were driving many similar households to ask for food.

‘Landlords are using opportunities to increase the rents but people are not getting increases in their income’ she said.

Welfare benefits have been adjusted each year in line with consumer prices but the accommodation supplement has not been adjusted since April 2005.

In Waitakere this means that the total benefit and accommodation subsidy for a couple with no children paying the area’s average weekly rent has gone up by only 17 per cent since April 2005 whereas the average rent has risen 53 per cent.

Although beneficiaries with children will get a $25 raise this April – benefits will not go up at all this year for those without children because consumer prices rose by only 0.1 per cent in the past year.

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Salvation Army volunteers are bracing themselves for a bumper Christmas – of assistance to families facing a struggle to keep afloat through the season of goodwill.

The church reports an average of 309 new families are reaching out for basic food parcels each week and it expects to help 17,000 households get through this Yuletide – subject to the generosity of the public via its annual Christmas appeal.

Even without the added costs and pressures of Christmas it says the need for food parcels has risen in many districts this year – including by 12 per cent in Auckland over the three months to September 30.

The Salvation Army gave out 6803 food parcels across the Super City in that period – 730 more than in the equivalent quarter of 2014.

That revealed an accelerated need – compared with an annual increase of 3.2 per cent in the number of parcels given out over the 12 months to September 30 – to 25,666.

Annual increases in some other parts of the country have been higher – including 59 per cent in Taranaki – 21.5 per cent in Napier – 17.5 per cent in Southland and 12.8 per cent in Northland.

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If we want to resist the trends dividing New Zealanders into the haves and the never-wills, the OECD has some policy suggestions the Government could take on board.

One is to index the main welfare benefits to the average wage rather than the consumers price index.

The biennial economic survey of New Zealand from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development devotes a lot of its 150 pages to inequality and poverty – where we are not doing well.

‘As in many other countries income inequality and poverty have increased – rising housing costs have hit the poor hardest – and the rate of improvement in many health outcomes has been slower for disadvantaged groups than for others. Gaps in education attainment have narrowed – but the influence of socio-economic background on education achievement has increased’ it says.

‘Of particular concern are those New Zealanders who face persistently low incomes – material hardship – and multiple barriers to economic and social participation.

This includes children in welfare beneficiary households – who have the highest risk of material hardship and poor long-term outcomes across a range of dimensions’.

To be fair last month’s Budget did something for those kids. But the child hardship package – when it kicks in nine months from now – will represent an increase of less than 2 per cent in welfare spending.

And it is part of a Budget which yet again embodies real per capita cuts in public spending.

Meanwhile no matter which measure of poverty or material hardship you use children are faring worse than the rest of the population – as are Maori and Pasifika.